A friend of mine who sells med supps is trying it. His mailer asked questions about Part C & D. They check off what they are interested in. Part C, med supp, final expense, annuities etc. First batch of 100. 7 returned for bad adress. 15 cards mailed back. Not too bad we will see the sales results next week.

Ok let me rephrase this. 15 people out of the 100 letters he sent out mailed the reply letter back. This is fact. Will he make any sales or is this people just wanting information. I don't know. He may only get 2 responses next time. He sent out another hundred last week. He got back over 20 so far with bad addresses.

I checked out sales genie too after watching the super bowl and they do have a pretty good database and you can access just about any list you want to including turning 65 and businesses with under 10 employees but you can not download a bunch without 'clicking' on every single selection. No thanks.
Not sure what sales genie has to do with a direct mail success though as they are just a database. I know they can mail for you but that's a rip off of its own.

If you are going to do DM the list is basically at the heart of success plus the mailer. Let's take a simple postcard from CIS, consider to be some of the best:

Now success will depend this reaching people at the right time and to achieve 5-10% return will likely on average take two to three hits or repeat mailings. Yet working with small numbers I can believe that occassionally you hit gold and the response is great but that shouldn't be consider normal or average.

Sales Genie is basically saying their databases are better than say GoLeads and others out there, while this may or may not be to important if you are telemarketing but DM is totally a different animal. In DM if you are going to do it the list information being accurate and timely is very important and I have no doubt that in this SalesGenie is likely better than GoLeads or others out there.

15% return on ANY kind of mailer is outstanding and if you are getting that then you need to bottle your secret & sell it. In the end you will make more money selling your secrets for high return than you ever will peddling insurance products one on one.

The database is a key. Without a good, reliable, accurate source it doesn't matter what you are offering. If you can't get eyeballs on your offer you are dead.

After having the right target market, AND a good database source, you have to be able to craft your pitch to catch the eye of your ultimate buyer. Something to differentiate you from the other wannabe's who also want your consumer to buy from them.

Free works, but mostly in attracting tire kickers. When I started in the business life agencies (career shops) provided lists & mailers to aid in prospecting. Can't recall how much I had to pay to send out the mailer but most of the responses wanted the free road atlas and could care less about getting info on life insurance, much less buying the product.

Now we see folks promoting seminars at restaurants. Hardly a week goes by when I don't get a fancy invitation to dinner at Outback, Ruth's Chris or some other restaurant to hear about how I should manage my assets.

The invitations cost money. The restaurant & free meal costs money. Folks I know that do these kind of seminars are spending $5000 - $9000 to put fanny's in chairs. They pitch investment products, trusts, asset protection . . . you name it. They usually earn $40,000+ per seminar making it worth their time. But who has almost $10k to generate sales prospects?

Even still, that is about an 8:1 return which isn't bad, but I get that consistently by spending a lot less than $9k every 3 - 4 months.

So direct mail can work, if you have the right message directed to the right market and are willing to stay with it for 6 months or longer to get the pay back. Heck you can even sell mortgage life insurance and make it if you have the funds & patience to use direct mail.

By the way, I had someone telemarket a Turning 65 list (500 names) provided by one of my carriers from their policy owners list. All we asked was whether they would be interested in receiving information. We got a 10% response for information. It was sent earlier this week so I have no data for how many sales. At an average of $250 commission per Med Supplement (and $125 for renewals, which essentially are for a lifetime), anything above 5 sales would be good return, I have about $200 invested in this since the list was free.

By the way, does anyone know about Med Supplements where the commission rates are higher than 12% first year and 6% renewal? Don't call me dumb, by the way, that's just Mutual of Omaha's in house rate and I know I can do better. It's just not worth researching until I see if it is a market I want to pursue.